Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Bully Nation

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Anti-Semitic Worldview

Josh Marshall rightly chastised the Trump campaign for an anti-Semitic closing ad targeting financier George Soros, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. And while the storyline of the 'Jewish Banking Conspiracy' has long motivated social movements like Aryan Nations, as well as domestic terrorist networks like the Christian Patriots and Minutemen, the ad itself is essentially correct when it states,

It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic
decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of
its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities.

In the minds of Christian Patriots, the banks are all controlled by
Satan through the Jews. It’s not as fashionable these days to say Jews
control the banks as it used to be, so the most common catch-phrase is
“international bankers.” The bigger the bank, the closer to the Prince
of Lies.

This anti-Semitic storyline overlooks the fact that high-level bankers merely manage private equity investments for the American aristocracy, which, as represented by the Bush family, is anything but Jewish. But then, internal logic is not one of the characteristics of the Christian Patriot mythos.

While Jewish U.S. Treasury secretaries Tim Geithner (Obama), Hank Paulson (Bush), and Robert Rubin (Clinton) provide fodder for the illogic of the Christian Patriot worldview, it is the system that is corrupt, as evidenced by pending Presidential Cabinet appointments under Trump.

As I observed in A World of Make Believe, privatization of all things falls under the much-hyped 'New Economy' promoted by Bill Gates, as well as by Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben--public relations puppets funded by fossil fuel magnates Warren Buffet and the Rockefeller brothers.

Advertising – in the form of privatized mass communication and education – now dominates public opinion, to the point that controlling consciousness on a global scale is a prescribed art...With the advent of social media and the reign of the Internet, controlling consciousness is now child’s play.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Divisions of Organized Crime

Transnational organized crime has two divisions: major league and minor league. The minor league includes drug-smuggling, gun-running, and human-trafficking. The major league comprises arms-trafficking, currency speculation, market manipulation, and tax haven services.

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

The DAPL Fantasy

When reality is too much to bear, we turn to fantasies to
keep from losing our mind. When fantasies become our reality, we are liable to
believe just about anything.

One fantasy currently circulating online is that Obama
halted DAPL because he has strong emotional ties to American Indians. While he
has helped tribes with issues like domestic violence and education, his strong
financial ties to oil industry investors like Goldman Sachs have created a
nightmare for many tribes across the country.

Standing Rock could have been avoided, had Obama not
approved fracking millions of acres of Bakken Shale in North Dakota. The
pipelines and bomb trains emanating from that disastrous decision alone will
haunt us for generations. In the Gulf of Mexico, Obama’s executive order
waiving environmental restrictions on risky deep-sea oil drilling resulted in
the largest oil spill in history.

While it is a relief that the stand-off at Standing Rock
avoided a showdown, by delaying the pipeline over Christmas,
the fact that it progressed to this point without interference from the White
House suggests Obama’s interest is in his perceived
legacy, since Trump is almost certain to forge ahead with its completion in
January.

Meanwhile, oil industry members of the Native American
Affairs Coalition advising President Trump propose making Indian Reservations
private property. As noted
at Reuter's, "The plan dovetails with Trump’s larger aim of slashing
regulation to boost energy production."

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Moment of Truth

As Center for World Indigenous Studies chair Rudolph C. Ryser states in his op-ed at IC Magazine,

I have been working with indigenous leaders for decades and
arguing that indigenous nations must take the initiative to take back
that which is and always has been theirs: land, resources and freedom to
move... Asking for rights from
those who have no interest in recognizing those rights is a defeated
policy. Taking back your land and resources they stole, as Chief George
Manuel urged, is the only alternative to self-destruction.

He goes on to say,

During the last four years, many UN member states have switched
from liberal democracy to reactionary fascism as global economic
collapse stirs deep fears among the working class and billionaires who
willingly give autocrats and dictators license to rule... Fourth World nations have three alternatives: become chameleon nation’s
to hide from attacks; join the scapegoating; or form coalitions with
other nations and with states to establish defenses and take control of
lands and their wealth.

Sounding a note of dire warning, Dr. Ryser observes,

Virtually all of the work by indigenous leaders in the United
States to build constructive relationships with states and central
governments and the United Nations are now utterly at risk of collapse
and reversal. Trumplicans will likely become the ultimate “Anti-Indian
Movement” in the United States since leaders of that movement now hold
seats in Congress, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the Executive
Branch as well as thirty of the fifty states.